I am an apple. Or rather, I was an apple. But I haven’t been edible for a long time. I appeared in my current form in the middle of the 19th century, but it is not clear where, Germany and Lorraine disputing my paternity. But basically, my nationality doesn’t matter, because what is indisputable is that I am the work of glass artisans.
Since then I have taken other forms, I have been molded in other materials, such as plastic, papier-mâché, or even porcelain. If the toys are distributed by the thousands in the song by Tino Rossi, me, I am sold by millions. According to a November 2019 Yougov poll, 41% of French people add elements to their Christmas decoration every year and 8% renew it entirely. And do not imagine that because it is the crisis, I am not sacrificed on the altar of savings. Christmas is sacred and the budget that the French devote to my purchase has even increased by 2 euros compared to last year.
Classic, timeless, iconic
Among all the decorations available on the market, which one do customers prefer? Me ! I am “the star of the tree”, confirms Marie-Claire Gollentz, director of Christmas magic in Riquewihr (Alsace), the only store in France 100% dedicated to Christmas, open all year round. In this shop, “the crowds begin in July and August and only increase until the end of the year”, welcoming up to 3,000 customers a day during Advent. “It’s the classic round shape in red-coloured glass that sells the best,” says Marie-Claire Gollentz. And yet, customers have the choice, among the 26,000 references of the store. But what do you want, the classic is timeless.
Iconic, even. Admittedly, my plastic and cheap Chinese cousins delight small budgets and parents of young children whose indelicate hands approach a little too close to the tree. But for true lovers of Christmas and its traditions, glass, if not unbreakable, is irreplaceable.
They represent everything we celebrate at Christmas: light and life in the heart of the night, the hope of seeing spring again.
And for that, my best ambassador is undoubtedly Didier Oeuvray. This Swiss, owner of the flea market Oethel and Co. in Porrentruy, has been collecting me for about forty years and now owns thousands like me, the oldest of which date from the 1880s. “The older they are, the more charming they are. Their reflections are incomparable, weathered by time. They represent everything we celebrate at Christmas: light and life in the heart of the night, the hope of seeing spring again. »
A unique know-how
I owe my brilliance to the ancestral gestures of glassblowers. In Lorraine, the Meisenthal International Glass Art Center revived this know-how nearly thirty years after the factory closed in 1969. Heated to more than 1,000 degrees in an oven, the molten glass is blown with a cane by expert mouths. It makes me thicker, and therefore stronger, than when I’m shaped out of spun glass, which is glass heated with a torch flame, then worked and blown through a glass tube. My shimmering reflections come from the layer of silvering on my inner face. As for my external face, it is painted, or not.
Since 1998, therefore, I find my colors of yesteryear in the Northern Vosges, to the delight of customers, who robbed the 70,000 pieces produced last year, including 3,500 copies of their annual creation, sold 24 euros room. At Féérie de Noël, my dearest friends “are worth around fifteen euros”, explains Marie-Claire Gollentz. The vast majority of references come from Eastern Europe, as does a good part of Didier Oeuvray’s collection. Because it is actually there that I am mainly produced, and in particular in Czechoslovakia. A know-how so unique, that even “during the Cold War, the country, although under Soviet domination, continued to export its decorations to the United States, says Didier Oeuvray. We were just hiding where it came from. »
A precious object that is proudly displayed one month in the year, I must be hung with care so as not to slip when the branches of your tree begin to dry and tilt downwards. And for that, Marie-Claire Gollentz has a trick: “You need a string that’s not too long. Pass the branch through the string, twist the top of the string and wrap it around the branch. Because finding myself shattered into a thousand pieces is really the (Christmas) balls.